Yalı Apartment Building, Antalya’s first row-house-style apartment complex, was located on Fener Street in the Sinan neighborhood, on lot 1 of block 1261. The building was constructed by the Sucular Construction Cooperative—established in 1957 under the leadership of Abdürrahim Erdem, the DSİ Regional Director at the time, to meet the housing needs of DSİ employees—and was opened for occupancy with an occupancy report dated March 24, 1964; Nevzat Feyzioğlu served as the contractor; while oral sources indicate that the design was by architects Baykan (Haksal) Tüzger and Erhan Tüzger, who were employed at the DSİ 13th Regional Directorate, this has not been documented.
The five-story block, accessible via four separate entrances, consists of forty independent units—two apartments per floor—and was therefore known in the urban collective memory as “The Forty Apartments.” With its mass rising on pilotis, its open floor plan and flexible facade design, its ribbon windows, and its common areas at ground level and on the terrace roof, it interpreted Le Corbusier’s principles of modern architecture and the Unité d’Habitation approach on a local scale. With its angled orientation designed to capture the sea breeze and the view, along with the hexagonal sun-shading blocks on the west facade, the building demonstrated how the International Style had been adapted to the Mediterranean climate. During its use, an elevator was added, the shared open spaces on the ground floor were enclosed, and the reinforced concrete roof on the terrace was removed.
The building, which suffered a fire in 2020 and was subsequently evacuated, could not be placed under protection because it was not a registered cultural asset and was demolished in 2024 in accordance with an urban renewal decision.
Source: Bölükbaş Dayı, E. & Alyanak Kaya, F. (2024). A collective approach to the production of modernism: The Antalya Yalı Apartment Building. Eksen DEU Faculty of Architecture Journal, 5(1), 1-19.
